Patients commonly obtain their prescribed medications through pharmacies. One system used for delivering medications to patients is disclosed in U.S. Patent Publication No. 2004/0088187 A1, published May 6, 2004, to Chudy et al. The Chudy reference is directed to optimizing pharmacy workflow associated with fulfillment of prescription orders for medications and health related products in a pharmacy environment. The system coordinates and controls pharmacy workflow to sequence prescriptions for fulfillment in an attempt to make the process efficient and to minimize a cost function associated with fulfillment of the prescription order. The Chudy reference also specifies validating prescription orders. Computer program instructions are used for validating each prescription order at a work station, including steps of selecting a prescription from the prescription sequence presented on a display, reading machine-readable indicia on a label of a container corresponding to each selected prescription, and releasing the prescription only after agreement is reached between the readable indicia and prescription. Prior to releasing the prescription, the customer's medical records may be automatically searched to determine whether there are potential adverse drug interactions between the patient and the prescription(s). The Chudy reference fails to address tracking and/or evaluating errors after such errors have occurred.
One prior system did attempt to record errors which may have occurred in the prescription fulfillment process. When an error occurred in the order fulfillment process, a manual form was filled out at the local store. These forms were then sent to a centralized customer complaint center. At the centralized customer complaint center, the manual form was entered into a computer system, and certain information was recorded about each “case.” The entering employee had the ability to create, modify, review and close a “case.” The following information was manually entered onto a manual form and manually sent to the centralized customer care center: the name and address of the person identifying and notifying the pharmacy of the error, the patient name, address and contact information, date of notification, the prescription number, the responsible employee, the verifying pharmacist, the date the matter was resolved, whether the case is open or closed, an indication of whether the medication was returned, an indication of whether the person refused to return the medication, whether a refund was provided, the date of any refund, the amount of any refund, the identification of the correct medication, who created the “case,” which store created the “case,” the status of the case, the attitude of the person reporting the error, the date the prescription having the error was sold, an indication of whether counseling was provided, the date of any such counseling, whether any of the medication having the error was used, the date of the initial dose, how many doses were used, and the alleged condition of the patient. After manual entry, notes could be added about the event, about recommended improvements for involved employees, and about recommendations/comments manually received from a district supervisor. Directions were provided for documenting a case. Once manually entered at the centralized customer care center, cases could be searched by case number or other information, and for all cases for a particular store. Reports could be run at the centralized customer care center for cases by store and by employee. However, this system did not integrate the employees or systems of any of the stores with the centralized customer care center, did not integrate the active capture of events at the store level, did not integrate the ability to actively track and resolve each case, did not provide any feedback through the system from information garnered from the system, did not integrate supervisory feedback with employees involved in the events on an employee. store, district or other basis, did not integrate other store, district or corporate management level feedback, and did not provide automated tracking and administrative reporting of events to state and federal agencies.
One further prior system includes attempting to track all prescriptions for a sensitive drug, which is disclosed in U.S. Patent Publication No. 2005/0090425 A1, published Apr. 28, 2005, to Reardan et al. The system disclosed in Reardan attempts to track prescription abuses for sensitive drugs by tracking prescription patterns of doctors and patients. The number of product defects and complaints, the number of shipping errors, the number of returned products, the number of adverse events, and the number of dosing problems are shown in one or more reports. However, no further details are provided. Moreover, in the context of Reardan reference, at least some of this information relates to standard shipping issues, which are well known in the factory and warehouse distribution art, and which do not relate to automated pharmacy error tracking.
One additional prior system includes gathering, processing, storing and reporting pharmacy data, which is disclosed in U.S. Patent Publication No. 2004/0148195 A1, published Jul. 29, 2004 to Kalies. Data from individual pharmacies is transmitted regularly to a data repository via an electronic communications network. Data received at the data repository failing to meet certain criteria is rejected. If such data passes the criteria, it is accepted and added to the database. Users may request the data that is accepted in the database, after passing security checks on the users. The amount and types of data available to each user may be limited by the user's predetermined security level clearance in order to protect patient privacy. However, Kalies does not teach or suggest a pharmacy error event tracking and reporting system.
The present invention is provided to solve or address these and other problems.